Dirk J. Wolfson. Public Finance and development Strategy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1979. Pp. xiv+264.

The world in its politico-economic aspects is run bypolicy-makers who have an academic background in law or publicadministration or other related social disciplines including economics.Only rarely would a majority of the policy-makers be trained ineconomics. In the making of economic policy, the basic choices beforethe policy-makers are political and they transcend the narrow concernsof economists regarding optimal use of resources. These considerationsin no way downgrade the relevance of economic analysis in economicpolicy-making and for the training of policy-maker in economics.Policy-makers need economic council to understand fully the implicationsof alternative policy options. In this book, Wolfson attempts to educatepolicy-makers in the areas of public finance and development strategy.The analysis avoids technicalities and is kept to a simple level to makeit understandable to civil servants, law-makers and members of theexecutive branch whom Wolfson refers to as policy-makers. Simplicity ofanalysis is not the only distinguishing mark of this book. Most otherbooks on public finance are usually addressed to traditional publicfinance issues relating to both the revenue and expenditure sides of thebudget and neglect an overall mix of issues dealing with the interactionof fiscal policy with economic development. Wolfson in this bookexplicitly deals with these issues.